


belong

by gingergenower



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Disturbing Themes, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mighty Nein as Family, Post 2x88, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Speculation, Spoilers, Swearing, Warning: Trent Ikithon, dun dun dun- ickythong bites the dust, that last warning is entirely Beau's doing, the mighty nein called; you can't have the wizard back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21791989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: Truly, it’s a little disheartening how much time Bren has wasted. He could have been as pivotal to the direction of the Empire as Ikithon himself, he could have changed so much, and yet he still ran from his destiny like he doesn’t belong to it. He was nothing but his inferior circumstances and insignificant childhood before Ikithon, and even when someone saw his power and gave him a use for it, he could not even be grateful for that path.No matter, he tells himself again. No matter. His body, mind and soul has always, and will always, belong to Ikithon. It’s an inevitability.***Caleb agrees to return to his old teacher, but he's not the person Ikithon is met by.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, The Mighty Nein & Caleb Widogast, Trent Ikithon & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 80
Kudos: 545
Collections: Finished111





	belong

**Author's Note:**

> alright so this story is Ikithon’s POV, and comes with all that entails- he details physical and psychological abuse he’s inflicted and plans to inflict, he’s derogatory, and he does not see himself as a villain or anything wrong with his beliefs. this could be deeply triggering, so please look after yourselves, up to and including not reading this story. if you think I need any more warnings, please let me know.

Regarding the response he received the night before, Ikithon smirks. It’s scribbled on a scrap of parchment and there’s a degree of authority in its pleading; he likes the attempt, but he had no plans to remove those Bren travelled with immediately. He had been toying, in fact, with the idea of letting Bren do it himself, if they were ever foolish enough to try to take him back.

Walking down the corridor of the abandoned building to their meeting point, he turns the letter between his fingers, signed B. A. Ermendrud.

The aasimar is curious in her potential, so he should consider repurposing her. She may even be an excellent partner for Eodwulf. Their skill sets are similar, but not so much that either would be rendered superfluous; placing her near Dwendal could be very helpful.

But, no matter now. The foremost objective of the day is to bring Bren back to where he belongs. The rest can wait.

On seeing the room numbered 428, he pockets the letter and touches his necklace beneath his clothes, checking that his shield is in place. He’s not a stranger to the idea that Bren may make one, last attempt to resist this.

Truly, it’s a little disheartening how much time Bren has wasted. He could have been as pivotal to the direction of the Empire as Ikithon himself, he could have changed _so much_ , and yet he still ran from his destiny like he doesn’t belong to it. He was nothing but his inferior circumstances and insignificant childhood before Ikithon, and even when someone saw his power and gave him a _use_ for it, he could not even be grateful for that path.

No matter, he tells himself again. No matter. His body, mind and soul has always, and will always, belong to Ikithon. It’s an inevitability.

Casting a general detect magic, a little careless- he's more interested in traps set on the door than the expected glow of magic from inside the room- he finds it’s as Bren said it would be. Nonetheless, when he opens the door to a dark room he expects a firebolt, perhaps, to injure, or a charm to control. Either would be entertaining and he would welcome seeing some of Bren’s magic, just as an educational study in his ability.

But, it’s not what he’s met with. Bren is not here.

Two hands clamp his and _crush_ , bones in his fingers grinding against each other and splintering and dislocating in less than a second. He yelps, but the palm of another slams under his jaw and stuns, so hard and fast his teeth clack together, and someone behind him uses the momentum and grabs his hair, jarring his head backwards and stuffing a thick cloth down his throat, securing it with a gag tight around the back of his head.

He can’t speak. He can't move. He can’t _cast_.

“- _his feet_ ,” a voice hisses.

He kicks out wildly, but there are too many hands and they catch his ankles, lifting him so readily off the floor it’s like he weighs nothing and walk him across the room. They dump him on a chair, the clank of chains as they force his broken hands into cone-like restraints, and it’s excruciating and humiliating and as he’s tied down he decides he will drive them to madness with pain, he will make _sport_ of their suffering.

Then, the hands and wrestling bodies disappear. He squints and struggles, trying to make out figures as the door shuts on the outside light, but for a few moments there’s nothing but darkness and silence, staring but not seeing anything of what’s happening around him.

A match strikes lit; a single candle glows on a side table, illuminating the creature that lit it, and his eyes adjust he sees them.

It’s the _friends_.

“Sup,” one of them says- the Expositor- and she gives him a two fingered salute as she walks up to him.

Ignoring his expression, she rips open the first few buttons of his robes and reaches down, finding the necklace. Eyes narrowing in scrutiny of it, she appears to confirm her recognition of it before she drops it, letting it be.

Behind her, the goblin wretch levels a crossbow at his chest, and Yasha stands with her arms crossed, watching him warily. The last, the tiny tiefling with no value at all, casts a spell, frowns at the lack of effect, and casts again.

He feels his shield melt away, and he raises an eyebrow- she dispelled with more power than he anticipated her being capable of. She also repeats the last spell he cast, and he feels it wash over him to no effect.

“Anything?” the Expositor asks, glancing back to the tiefling, who swallows, hesitating.

“No. But you know, I might’ve missed something, he’s very powerful and I-”

“We trust you,” Yasha says quietly, and the Expositor shrugs, nodding.

“Yeah, and I mean- the Traveller’s with you, right? He’s got our backs too.”

The tiefling blinks, then smiles a little, the fear thawing. “Right. Yes. He is here.”

“Good enough for me,” the Expositor says airily, grabbing a chair and putting it down with a thunk in front of Ikithon, straddling the back of it to face him. She watches his expression, her gaze measured with calm and curiosity, and then she slumps back, shaking her head. “I actually cannot _believe_ you were this fucking arrogant. Do you know how many contingency plans we had? Strategies for when we inevitably fucked up?”

Ikithon glares.

“Like, _really_ , man? He sends you a letter and you’re all- ‘yup, I’ll walk _straight_ into that, no backup, nothing, just me and Caleb, this will definitely go to plan’?”

His fingers try to flex in response to his welling rage but they don’t even respond, ruined by the breaking and the restraints.

He allows himself a moment to reflect; this one will die differently. She will die by increments, her suffering a novelty in its own right, and he will do it himself and make Bren endure watching it while he still thinks he cares for her.

She might be how he breaks Bren in again.

Tapping her hands on the wooden back of the chair, no rhythm to it, she turns to Yasha and exhales. “Thought this was gonna be harder.”

“So did I,” Yasha says. “Might still be.”

At that, the Expositor pulls a face carelessly and turns back to Ikithon, addressing him directly. “Yeah. See, we kind of didn’t actually talk about what we were gonna do once we got you. We were a bit preoccupied with the _how_ , and we were pretty thin on time, so.”

He thinks of villains monologuing in poor novels, and wonders how long it will take them to give in and _ask_ for something. It’s only a matter of time before they make a mistake, and want him to speak.

He need only say a word, and he could destroy them all.

“Well, we’re going to kill him, right?” the goblin says, crossbow still trained on him from across the room.

“Yeah,” the Expositor says. “I mean- yeah, that’s what I was thinking, it feels like that’s our only option at this point, but. I kind of feel like... we should let Caleb do it.”

“I don’t-” Yasha cuts herself off, frowning. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Beau.”

“Nope, neither do I,” she says, staring at Ikithon but not really seeing him. “If the choice we’re giving him is ‘hey, do you want to execute your former teacher who you have deeply fucked up, mixed feelings about because he groomed and abused you, or do you want us to do it for you?’, it’s pretty shitty of us.”

They all pause, thinking.

“I could send him a message and ask him what he _hypothetically_ would want?” the tiefling suggests, but it’s not convinced or convincing, and the Expositor shakes her head.

“He’d know what we’re doing.”

“I’m a really good liar,” the tiefling says, stubborn, and the Expositor smiles despite herself, shaking her head.

“Still. Maybe... fuck _._ Maybe we just shouldn’t tell him.”

“I agree,” the goblin says, but the tiefling frowns.

“That- at _all_?”

“Yeah. Look,” the Expositor says, turning her back to Ikithon like he isn’t even a threat, “let’s say we kill him and dump the body, in a river or a shallow grave or whatever. The Cerberus Assembly will probably figure out what he was doing to kids like Caleb and they’ll just figure one of his operatives killed him and split. Or, hell, I could get Dairon to retroactively authorise it as part of a Cobalt Soul thing, whatever. If we tell Caleb- it's gonna _hurt_ him, right? One way or another.”

“And we could always tell him later,” Yasha adds, when the tiefling only seems more worried. “He needs time to properly heal.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” The Expositor lingers on the tiefling for a moment, then levels her gaze at Ikithon again, animated in her explanation. “See, he did write that letter you got, but we figured out what he doing before he sent it. We sat him down and explained to his scrawny ass that doesn’t _get_ to trade his life for ours and that he’s just going to have to trust us to survive you, which honestly was a big fucking deal because we nearly die every other day. And he thinks we destroyed the letter.”

“But we sent it,” the goblin says, sneering.

Ikithon will let it die in a cage, starving, suffering.

“We don’t have to tell him.” The Expositor swallows, and for the first time she looks afraid but she doesn’t seem to care than Ikithon sees, not looking away from him, jaw tight. “But only if we’re 100% agreed on that.”

The room goes quiet while the tiefling fiddles with the symbol on her wrist. “I don’t... I don’t _want_ to lie to him.”

The Expositor closes her eyes, pained, and nods. “Ok.”

“But... this is- this is murder, this is _premeditated_ , this isn’t about- right, or wrong, we _know_ what we’re doing is fucked up but we’re trying to protect him.” The tiefling looks to Yasha. “And we have to do it.”

“I think so,” Yasha says, soft.

“Ok. Then- ok. We don’t tell Caleb.”

“Or Caduceus, he might disapprove of the lying.”

The tiefling wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know, I don’t think he would.”

“Fjord already knows,” the Expositor says, standing up and dusting herself off, tossing the chair aside. “He let me borrow those manacles.”

Ikithon looks between them, but they have... no regard for him. They don’t have questions about Bren, they don’t want information on the deal with the Bright Queen- it's as if he’s already dead.

“Are we- oh.” The tiefling starts at her action, and swallows. “We’re doing it now.”

“You don’t have to stay, Jester,” Yasha says, and the Expositor nods.

“You should go too,” the Expositor says, and Yasha pauses.

“I... I could kill him cleanly.”

“I won’t lose sleep if I don’t,” the Expositor says, and the goblin nods in approval, but Yasha’s eyes tighten.

“Beau, you have never killed someone like this-”

“Yeah, well. I’m the last murderer he’ll make of anyone.” The Expositor meets Ikithon’s gaze. “I kinda dig the poetry of that.”

“Beau... you don’t have to.”

“I know.” Reaching out and squeezing Yasha’s hand, the Expositor shrugs. “But I’m gonna.”

Ikithon shifts in his seat, struggling against the chains around his ankles and waist but they’re not even budging. The chair creaks and the tiefling notices, narrowing her eyes his way even as the Expositor takes the axe off her belt.

She's only distracted when the Expositor kisses her, eyes fluttering shut and kissing back, but even then the goblin’s keeping a close watch on him, right up until the Expositor closes the door behind Yasha and the tiefling. As the handle clicks back into place, neither of them move, both of them thinking.

“He’s so scared.” She speaks to the door, but he hears her. “He- I don’t think he’s even scared of you, most of the time. I think he’s scared of himself, of what _he_ might do, and we- we can’t change what he’s done. We can do _fuck all_ to save him from that. But we know what you did to him.”

She straightens up and looks over her shoulder at him. He stares back, every bit of vicious hatred he feels in his gaze.

“We know you tortured him. We know you gave him those scars on his arms. We know you screwed with his head and made him destroy the only people he had in his life that might miss him, just so you could make him your _pet_.”

The goblin has to pull her hand back a little, just so she doesn’t pull the trigger in anger, and Ikithon swallows, trying not to panic, heart thumping hard in his chest.

“And I want to make you _that_ scared, shitface. I want to hurt you like you hurt him, but I don’t think I could, so.” She twirls the axe in her hand, measuring the balance of it. “I want you to know he doesn’t belong to you. He’s not your property, he’s not your _creation_. He’s our family and you fucked with the wrong assholes, because he might wish he was a good person but we have no interest in trying to be that.”

All they need to do is demand one question of him, give him one opportunity-

“We want him safe.”

The Expositor looks to the goblin and smiles, nodding. “Yeah.”

This is not how he dies, in some abandoned building in the middle of Xhorhas. He is a hero of the Empire, he will be a legend told to children, he will not be killed by this creature and a reckless librarian. This is not how he dies, it cannot be-

“So,” the Expositor says, taking the axe with both hands and raising her eyebrows, a challenge he can’t respond to. “How do we want to do this?”

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote that last line before I really realised what I was doing and then I left it because wHAT A GEM
> 
> there's something deeply satisfying about Ikithon literally being nothing but a spectator in this fic; it’s probs messed up of me but words are his weapon, and I just want to see this fucker powerless and _afraid_.


End file.
